Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 19
Repairing a Bowl
When Mo Yan got back home, she saw that her sister wasn’t at the fields and was embroidering at home, she handed over the remainder of the wrap she hadn’t eaten over to her, “Sis, try it. It tastes really good and it might even be able to be sold for a tidy profit.”
Mo Ling rolled her eyes at her, “Stop speaking nonsense, did you get this from the Lu family? If mother found out, she’d say that a girl begging others for food is shameful and slap you!”
“Lu Junming forced me to eat this!”
Mo Yan explained hurriedly. She felt a wave of embarrassment wash over her, and thought, I’m never accepting any food from the Lu family ever again!
“Sis, then eat it quickly so mother doesn’t find out.”
She took the wrap and finished it in two bites. “You’re right, it tastes great!”
“It’s called a wrap, and you can put anything in it. It’s also really easy to make. If we were to sell it, where would we go?”
Mo Ling thought for a bit before answering, “Definitely not the village. You’d have to sell it in town at the very least, in inns, posthouses, or even on the street. After making the wraps, you could put them in a basket and sell them to people in a hurry so they could eat on the road.”
“So let’s do that then!”
Mo Ling spread open her hands, “We don’t have the funding!”
The large pot in the kitchen hadn’t been washed up yet, and there was still some leftover porridge for Mo Yan. She served herself some of the thinner porridge to eat and scooped the thicker porridge into another bowl, to be mixed in with a new batch of porridge for the next meal.
Suddenly, there was a call advertising something outside their home. Mo Yan couldn’t hear the exact details, but Mrs. Liang immediately rushed out of her room, grabbed the broken halves of a bowl from the kitchen, and went out. [1]
“Bowl repairer, wait a second!”
So the call wasn’t to sell goods, but the bowl repairer here to repair bowls. Mo Yan thought it was interesting, so she hurriedly cleaned up the kitchen and went over to have a look.
In the shade of the alleyway, an old white-haired man was standing by the side of a wheelbarrow. Mrs. Liang handed over the two broken halves of the bowl and asked, “Can you repair this?”
He inspected the cracks on both halves of the broken bowl and replied, “The two halves can still fit together, so it’ll fit, but it won’t be able to contain soup and water anymore. It’ll leak.”
“That’s fine. How much will it cost?”
“Two dollars.”
“Deal, then repair it!”
The old man grabbed a stool from the wheelbarrow and went to work. Then, the old wooden door of the home directly next to the Mo family slammed open. Mrs. Liu, the Zhang family’s wife, came out and glared at Mrs. Liang viciously, saying, “Aren’t you earning a lot of money now? Can you still not bear to throw away a broken bowl?”
Even Mo Yan could read between the lines. This was obviously due to Mrs. Liang being employed by the Lu family, and they wouldn’t be able to avoid this matter.
Mrs. Liang was unwilling to back off. She glared daggers at Mrs. Liu and slowly replied, “No matter how rich you are, you still need a capable woman to keep a watchful eye over your wealth. Otherwise, you’ll still be begging for food.”
Mrs. Liu replied coldly, “It doesn’t matter how capable the woman is if she’s shameless!”
“Who are you calling shameless!”
The word ‘shameless’ instantly sparked the flames of war.
“You! The Lu family hired me to be their domestic helper, and you just had to take my business. I’m your neighbour, and you don’t even let me have this shred of face! How could you be so shameless?”
Mrs. Liang didn’t raise her voice and said slowly, “So you still don’t know! The Lu family gave me the job offer first, but I just hadn’t accepted yet so they hired you temporarily. Now I’ve accepted their job offer, they’d naturally hire me and not you. After all, what would you cook for them? What could you do for them?”
Mrs. Zhang couldn’t successfully argue against her and became infuriated, “You, you shrew! You’re still acting so righteous after stealing someone else’s job. When your husband comes back, let’s see how he deals with you! He might even divorce you!”
A common folk saying is that no one lands gentle blows in fights, and no one uses gentle words in arguments. This argument between the two will definitely involve words which damage both of their faces.
The eldest son of the Zhang family Dagan came out when he heard his mum arguing in the alleyway, and tried to defuse the situation, “Mom, why are you yelling at her? Come back home first!”
She looked at her son bitterly, “I lost a job that paid five hundred dollars a month! How could I ever get a similar opportunity?”
Dagan was an honest person, and didn’t understand, “Well, you can’t control who Sir Lu employs, and he has the final say. What would arguing with Mrs. Liang change?”
“If she hadn’t come over to take away my job, how would I have lost it? Why did I ever give birth to you? You’re big and strong, but you’re less useful than a weak girl.”
She was insulting Mo Yan! Mo Ling, who had been standing on the doorstep for quite some time, stepped out and said, “Mrs. Liu, why are you dragging a child into an argument between adults? I never knew our Yan’er was that competent!”
Mrs. Liang supported her daughter. “That’s right. You lost your job because you’re not as good as me, and now you’re blaming my youngest daughter?”
Mrs. Liu was so filled with rage, her eyes filled with tears. However, she didn’t want Mrs. Liang to see that so she dragged her son by his sleeves back into their home.
After the old man finished repairing the bowl and received his payment, he immediately packed up and left. He was afraid Mrs. Liang would nitpick about some minor defect. He could live with not getting paid, but not with getting a scolding on top of that.
Mrs. Liang returned home happily with the repaired bowl as she talked to herself, “You can buy a lot with eight hundred dollars every month!”
Mo Yan followed behind her, “This might not be a long-term job. If Lu Junming leaves the village, Sir Lu won’t hire you anymore.”
“Has he said that he’s leaving?”
I’ve only been happy about getting this job for such a short period of time, am I losing my job that quickly?
“No, but he probably won’t be staying that long, so we need a back-up plan in case that happens.”
“Everyone wants to earn money, but what ways can you earn money in this small backwater?”
“Mom, we only grow wheat and sorghum in our fields. It’s not even enough to keep ourselves fed, so why don’t we grow something more valuable?”
“What do you want to grow, money?”
“Medicinal herbs! They’ll definitely sell for more than wheat and sorghum.”
“No, those two acres of field are our lifeline, and can’t be wasted. If the medicinal herbs can’t be sold, we can’t even eat them!”
As soon as Mrs. Liang thought about that, she felt a fear in her heart. In her opinion, it was best to harvest medicinal herbs from the wild and sell them. Mrs. Liang would only change her mind if she saw money, and wouldn’t be able to be convinced via words.
The medicinal herbs in their courtyard had almost finished drying. Mo Yan collected the chinese foxgloves and put them in a small linen bag, then did the same with the dandelions in another bag.
Mr. Cao went to his clinic in town in the mornings, and would only return to the village during the afternoon or sometimes even late at night. Whether these medicinal herbs could be sold or not need to be determined by him.
During lunchtime, Mrs. Liang went to cook lunch at the Lu family’s, taking a small bowl of sauce along with her. Since they were paying her eight hundred dollars every month,it was appropriate to bring them some salted eggs or sauce.
The food on the Mo family’s kitchen table was the same as always. However, Mo Yan was more talkative now Mrs. Liang wasn’t here.
“Sis, do you know about the large patch of land by the outskirts of the village?”
“Yes, I’ve dug for wild vegetables there in the past.”
“Does it really not have an owner?”
“Yes. It’s far away and comprised mostly of saltland, so will take a lot of fertiliser to become arable. No one bothered to claim it.”
It was such a big waste to leave such a large plot of land fallow, but they didn’t have any oxen or horses. It was too hard to till the fallow land without them.
“There are a lot of chinese foxgloves and dandelions there, we can go harvest them there!”
“Sure. Check with Mr. Cao first to see whether or not the herbs can be sold for money. If yes, I’ll go harvest them with you every day. It’s not like there’s a lot of work in the fields.”
PS: Edited Jan 29th, 2024, to try and get the rest of the story up to the current standards. This includes using the current terms and polishing up the translation. It has been a very long time since I’ve edited a chapter, hasn’t it? I’m going to try my best to make these more regular now that life has settled down some.
[1] Wow, I nearly forgot about the broken bowl. The author of this story really remembers all these small details…except for the fact Mrs. Liang is supposed to have a cough.